Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to close a projected $1.2 billion budget gap in 2021 would hike sales and property taxes by $76.4 million, eliminate 1,921 city jobs and dip into the city’s rainy-day fund.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot will face the biggest test of her time in office on Wednesday when she details her plan to fill the massive budget shortfall caused in part by the coronavirus pandemic.

A member of the Wilmette Library Board of Trustees who also works as a state lobbyist sued the city of Chicago, seeking to overturn a ban on elected officials from outside Chicago from lobbying city officials.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and two of her closest allies on the Chicago City Council remain at odds over long-stalled efforts to put an elected board of Chicago residents in charge of the Chicago Police Department.

In a typical year, approximately 3% of property owners do not pay their taxes, according to Chicago officials. But in 2021, a projected 10% of property owners won’t pay their tax bills, which would cost the city $65.2 million.

A ban blocking elected officials from outside Chicago from lobbying city officials will remain in place after aldermen unanimously rejected a proposal from Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday to ease the ban.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot this week painted a grim picture ahead of her Oct. 21 budget address as the city tries to close a massive budget gap. Our politics team tackles those stories and more in this week’s roundtable.

Chicago officials now have the power to strip multimillion-dollar tax incentives from companies that “betray the public’s trust” — but lawyers for the city have determined the new rules cannot be used to punish the firm that botched a demolition in April.

“For many of us, financial ruin is simply one bad day away,” said the head of the union representing 1,000-plus City Colleges adjunct faculty members who are seeking a new contract guaranteeing pay equity.

Two proposals to spend $9.1 million to repair the CTA’s Lake Street bridge and the Dearborn Street subway stalled Tuesday amid objections from aldermen about efforts to hire firms owned by female, Black and Latino Chicagoans.

Aldermen sided with the mayor on Tuesday in a dispute over a proposal to build a 48-unit affordable housing complex in Jefferson Park, turning back an effort by Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th Ward) to block the development.

Matthew Beaudet would become the first Native American commissioner in the city’s history. “I’m humbled by it,” Beaudet told WTTW News before his confirmation hearing.

Efforts to transform a Northwest Side tax program created in the 1980s amid the racist panic that greeted the election of Chicago’s first Black mayor are stalled — nearly two years after new leadership promised a fresh start.

A plan to transform a long-vacant lot in Jefferson Park into an apartment complex that reignited the furious debate surrounding Chicago’s massive affordable housing shortfall faces a key vote Tuesday.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the plan she sends to the Chicago City Council will not count on the federal government sending additional relief funds to the city. 

Two of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s closest allies say they are frustrated and disappointed that she has apparently dropped her support for long-stalled efforts to put an elected board of Chicago residents in charge of the Chicago Police Department.